THE SIN OF NORA MORAN (1933)

After the death of her husband, Governor Dick Crawford, his widow Edith visits her brother, district attorney John Grant, with a stack of love letters she found from her husband's mistress. For some reason, Edith wants to make a public fuss in hopes of ruining the woman, but John reveals that he knows who she is, or was: convicted murderess Nora Moran. We get a flashback to the hours before her execution during which time she is told that she could be spared if she told her motive for the murder. She refuses, and as she drifts in and out of consciousness due to a sedative she's been given, we learn her story through more flashbacks. After her parents are killed in a car accident, she manages to get through dance school, and takes a job with a traveling circus as assistant to lion wrestler Paulino. One night he drunkenly rapes her and she leaves, finding a job dancing in a club where she meets Dick Crawford, a (married) man being groomed to run for governor. They begin an affair and he puts her up in a nice house where he spends Mondays and Fridays with her. John finds out about the affair and, as one of Dick's political cronies, goes to Nora and asks her to break it off. Nora agrees but, as it happens, her old circus is in town that night and she gets a visit from Paulino who says he's going to blackmail Dick to keep their affair out of the news. Next thing we know, Paulino is dead, Nora having apparently struck him in the head with a whip handle, and John is helping her to get rid of the body, but Nora is caught, tried, and found guilty. As governor, Dick could issue a pardon and he is tormented over doing so, especially because, as we eventually discover, it was actually Dick who struck the fatal blow. But she doesn't want a pardon so she goes to her death with the story of their affair still secret. But back in the present, we find out that Dick had killed himself just moments after Nora was executed.

This fairly straightforward plot is told in an elliptical fashion that made my viewing of this film a bit confusing—I'm not even certain that my summary is completely accurate. In addition to nested flashbacks and an occasional flash-forward, there are a couple of possible supernatural occurrences—including a wonderfully creepy moment when Paul and Dick are standing over her candlelit coffin before she's been executed—not to mention the fragmented timeline; my chronological summary does not necessarily reflect the order in which we see the story unfold. Some critics claim that Orson Welles was influenced by this movie in putting together CITIZEN KANE, but a high-profile film from the same year, THE POWER AND THE GLORY, is more likely Welles' inspiration. As a product of Majestic Pictures, a Poverty Row studio, this is pretty amazing, though a bigger budget might have led to a less messy screenplay. Zita Johann (Karloff's reincarnated lover in THE MUMMY) is excellent as the tragic Nora, and Alan Dinehart is impressive as John, a part that grows in importance as the movie goes on. Paul Cavanagh as Dick and John Miljan as Paulino are OK but both characters are a bit underwritten. This hits several pre-Code tropes: rape, adultery, and a surprisingly explicit suicide scene, and the dark shadowy look of the film would be more common later in the 1940s when film noir blossoms. The director, Phil Goldstone, uses some interesting transitional devices, like wipes and dissolves and a darkening of the frame as we move between places and time frames, giving much of the movie a dream-like feeling. Very interesting indeed, and ripe for re-watching, if only to try and iron out the story wrinkles. Pictured are Johann and Cavanagh. [TCM]